A Random Encounter
by TKcloud9
Summary: A normal girl discovers the Doctor and the TARDIS sitting in her backyard. She gets him to talk about his adventures, but when she realizes that she hasn't experienced all the alien invasions, the Doctor has to tell her the truth. Her world isn't real...


When I woke up in the morning, there was a little blue shed in my backyard. Except we don't have a shed. I didn't think anything of it, of course. I made myself a bowl of cereal and a cup of tea and went to the window by the table to have my breakfast and read the next chapter of "Atlantis Found," by Clive Cussler.

Then I saw a man. He was sitting on the ground, leaning back on the shed, looking dejected and slightly lost. He was wearing a pair of black jeans, a T-shirt and a black leather jacket, and he had a funny looking face. His dark blue eyes were staring at the ground as if he could see through to China. For a few seconds I even believed he could have.

I stared at him for a few seconds, wondering if I should call my mom or the police or run to the neighbor's house. My neighbor was a volunteer fireman, he would know what to do. But I didn't do anything. I just stared for a few more minutes, and then I grabbed my phone in one hand and a meat tenderizer in another (the closest thing to hand) and opened the back door. There was something so strange about the man, I just had to see what, or who, he was.

"Hello," I said, padding over the concrete in my now-wet socks to where the blue box/shed-thing was standing.

He looked up, startled, and smiled at me. "Hello."

"What are you doing in my back yard?" I asked.

"Nothing much," he replied, in some sort of British accent. Like the kind you'd get on BBC America or Youtube videos. "I'm locked out of the TARDIS, it's gone into some sort of sensor overload with all the time energy I've been reading-and my head's ringing. Seems like I got the whole Jarelian chorus in my ears."

I bit my lip to stave off the perfect retort about his ears, and said, "Want some ibuprofen?"

"You shouldn't be talkin' to strangers," he told me. "I'm the Doctor, by the way. Who are you?"

"Teri," I said. Then I smiled. "See? Not strangers." I stuffed the meat tenderizer in my sweatshirt pocket and held out a hand to help him up from the wet grass.

He gave me a big, goofy, grin, his eyes sparkling, and accepted my help to stand. He looked at the door of the blue box - Police Public Call Box, it was called - and shrugged. "Have you got tea?" he asked, turning to me. "I could really use a cuppa."

"Yep." I turned and went back into the house, the Doctor following. "That's the kitchen. There's already hot water, and mugs and tea and stuff are in that big cabinet next to the microwave." I sat down on the couch and peeled off my wet socks and rolled up my pajama pants to keep the wet off my ankles. "So, what's the blue box?" I asked, as he stuffed 3 English Breakfast tea bags into a mug and poured the water. An almost tangible explosion of caffeine filled the downstairs.

"It's my spaceship," he said. "Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. Shouldn't you be in school?"

"I homeschool," I replied. "Why is your spaceship made of wood?"

"It's not. It's a disguise." He looked at me, his eyes piercing right to the depths of my soul. "Why are you taking all of this so calmly?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I read so much sci-fi that spaceships and aliens falling out of the sky sounds kind of normal."

His eyes narrowed. "Why do you say I'm an alien?"

"Aren't you?" I asked. "You ought to be."

"I am," he said, nodding.

I nodded back. This seemed to be the day for taking things calmly. For once, my inner fangirl was quiet and I asked, "What kind of alien?"

"I'm a Time Lord," he replied, sitting on the couch across from me.

"That sounds fantastic."

Another grin. "It is."

I leaned forward, curling up with my legs under me. I was just going to ask him what that meant, specifically, but a flood of questions came pouring out of me. "What's your planet like? Where else have you been? Are there other aliens? Are they nice? How come we haven't seen any before? Can you time travel? Have you met Shakespeare?"

He looked at me for a few seconds, his brow furrowed, and then said, "My home planet was called Gallifrey. It's gone now, in a war, but it was the most beautiful planet in the universe..." he rambled on, and in the course of two and a half hours he told me all about his planet and a dozen other planets, gave me a quick political overview of the galaxy, and counted off the number of famous people he'd met. "Not Shakespeare though," he said. "Not yet."

I was just staring at him. That was all I could do, with my brain whirling full of places and people I'd never even imagined before. "Wow."

"Fantastic, isn't it?" he said, smiling at me cheerfully. He drained the last drop of his third cup of tea (when had he gotten up to make more?) and said, "Well, I should get started."

"On what?" I asked, standing up and following him to the door again, this time pulling on a pair of shoes.

"I told you. My ship is broken. I think she's calmed down enough to let me in though." He produced a normal-looking silver key and stuck it in the lock. "There we go." He went in, leaving the door open behind him.

I couldn't resist. I followed him inside- and stopped in shock. The inside was huge! I backed out of the box and tripped over the threshold, falling on my butt. I didn't even notice thoguh, I was too busy realizing that the last 3 hours I'd been in the company of an alien, _an alien_, and I was staring at a spaceship. A _spaceship_, which was in my backyard. My stories and my books and my dreams were coming to life.

The Doctor came to the door and saw me sitting there crying out of shock, and looked at me sympathetically. "It finally got to you," he said.

"Culture shock," I sniffed, wiping my eyes with my sleeve.

"Yep." He gave me a hand up, and as it started to rain he asked, "Are you coming in?"

I glanced from my house to the TARDIS, and followed him into the TARDIS. I sat on the chair and watched the Doctor as he worked on the console.

"So, where are we, anyway?" he asked, about ten minutes into the tinkering. "From the accent we're in America, somewhere, aren't we?"

"Oregon," I said. "Two hours from the beach."

"What's it like?" he asked. "A normal little human existence?"

It surprised me that he'd even want to know. From his stories he'd sounded quite arrogant, like he didn't even care sometimes. Like little people weren't important. But he'd asked, so I said, "Well, normal, I guess. I can sleep in whenever I want..."

He finished fixing the TARDIS and we went back to my house for sandwiches and leftover pasta.

"So, now that the TARDIS is fixed, now what?" I asked, once we'd finished clearing away the dishes.

"I'm gonna keep traveling."

"Can I come with you?" I asked, suddenly loathing my ordinary existence.

He looked at me with those age-old eyes, and said, "No. I'm sorry."

I nodded. "It's okay. My parents would probably go crazy if I ran away with an alien to have adventures. And I need to graduate, and get a job, and stuff."

He grinned at me. "Sounds fantastic."

I walked him to the door of the TARDIS and said, "Well, goodbye, I guess."

"Goodbye," he said.

I stepped back as he went in and closed the doors, and watched in amazement as the box began to disappear. I stood there for a good twenty minutes, getting soaked in the rain, staring at where the box had been. Then I went back inside to shower and change before mom got home. I didn't want to have to explain anything.

Four Years Later:

The week after I graduated, I did nothing but sleep and eat and recover my strength from Finals Week. I was alone in the house, watching reruns of Sherlock Holmes, when I heard it. The sound of the universe landing on your doorstep. I turned off the TV and ran for the window. There it was- the blue box. I ran outside and stood there waiting for the light on top to stop flashing. As soon as it had, I knocked on the door. "Doctor?" I called, knocking frantically. "Doctor?"

The door swung open, and I stepped back, a huge grin on my face. The smile fell off my face a second later as a younger, brown-haired man in a brown pinstripe suit popped out of the door. "Teri!" he said, grinning from ear to ear.

I glared at him suspiciously. "Who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor," he said, looking at me, as if he was confused as to why I was confused. "Don't you remember me?"

"You're not the Doctor," I said. "He was older, and had a different accent, and blue eyes and funny ears. Where is he?" I was starting to wish I'd brought the meat tenderizer with me.

He looked at me with a serious face. "That was me," he said. "Don't you remember? I told you, I could change. Different face, different voice, same man. I'm the Doctor." He caught my gaze and stared at me.

As our eyes locked, I realized that it was. It was _him_. He had the same ancient look in his eyes, light hearted and deadly serious all at the same time. "Doctor?" I said, giving him a tentative smile.

"Hello!"

I hugged him, and he hugged me back. "What happened?" I asked, pulling away from him to get a good look at him. "Why did you change? How long has it been for you?"

"I had to change. My body was dying. But I'm okay. It's been, let's see, 5 years since I saw you." He raised an eyebrow at me. "Why are you in pajamas still?"

"I just graduated," I said proudly. "4.0 GPA. I'm taking the week off to sleep."

"Congratulations!" he said, giving me another hug. "I knew you were brilliant."

"Why did you come here?" I asked suddenly.

"How about a cup of tea?" he said instead, and went inside the house.

I followed him hastily. "No really though," I said.

"I'm going to die soon," he said abruptly. "But before I go on that last adventure, I wanted to see the only person in the whole multiverse whose life I haven't ruined."

I stared at him in shock, and tears began to fill my eyes. "What are you talking about?"

He told me, then, all about Rose and Martha and Donna and the Metacrisis and the Daleks and the Mars base and the Ood in the snow, calling to him, and how he was running away from it all. "So that's my life," he said, "what have you been doing?"

I blinked back tears and took a breath to rally myself. "Oh, nothing much," I said. "Studying, reading, watching TV, volunteering at the local theatre for backstage work."

"Sounds briliant," he said.

I shook my head. "I don't understand, though."

"What?"

"You've told me all these things, Daleks and planets and ships in the sky, but I never saw any of it. And believe me, I was looking. Why haven't I seen anything? Why hasn't the world seen anything?"

The Doctor stared at me, trying to feign ignorance. "Maybe you haven't watched the news often enough."

"Doctor, please," I said. "I'm not a little kid, I can handle it. Am I in a parallel universe? Is that why? Or am I just crazy? Are you just a figment of my imagination?"

He was shaking his head. "No, that's not it."

"Well then?" I insisted.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I'm so sorry. But this place doesn't really exist."

I stared at him in shock, unable to even process what he was saying. "What do you mean, it doesn't exist?" I asked. "Of course it exists. You're sitting there."

"No, it doesn't," he said. "And no, I'm not. This is all a virtual reality. One you've been trapped in for 4 years."

"What are you talking about?" I said, a permanent chill settling around my spine. "This is all inside my head? _You're _inside my head? Are you even _real_?"

"Yes," he was quick to assure me. "I'm real, you're real. Your parents are real. You've all been trapped in a stasis field, due to an experiment of these aliens called the Redlaeiel. They wanted to study the human race, so they picked out a handful and stuck them in a virtual reality. I came across your mind, floating in cyberspace, and was able to make contact with it. You were the most imaginative of all of them, being the youngest."

"So when you said you were stuck," I started.

"I was actually stuck in the virtual reality," he said. "Yes. And the TARDIS wasn't letting me back into the real world until I came up with the right mental pathways."

"And this time why are you here?" I asked.

"Well, it took a while to find you," he said. "The universe is a big place. But I'm actualy with you, now, my brain hooked into the main matrix. I can get you and the other people out and take you back to Earth."

"Well then?" I asked impatiently.

"Doing so," he started, "doing so might be dangerous. It might fry your brains to be taken out after so many continous years."

"Do it," I said. I looked around my house - fake house - and suppressed a shudder. I couldn't bear to live knowing that I was living in a dream. "Please."

He gave me a wild grin. "Okay then. Here we go. Give me two seconds." He promptly vanished, and the world around me started to shimmer. It shimmered and twisted and finally vanished into thin air.

I opened my eyes, and found the Doctor standing over me anxiously. "Are you all right?" he said.

I sat up, ignoring the massive headache. "Are we real now?"

"Real as possible," he said. "Are you okay?"

"Just a headache," I replied, waving it off. I spotted my parents laying on a pair of beds off to the side and rushed over. I took two steps and fell to the floor, my muscles not used to working after five years laying down. The Doctor picked me up and put me back on the bed. "Easy now," he said. "You're gonna need some time to readjust to actually moving again."

"Good idea," I said shakily.

At that moment a large klaxon began to sound and lights began to flash. An alien voice began to blare over the speakers.

"What's that?" I demanded.

The Doctor turned to me, his eyes wide with excitement. "On the other hand what if I told you you're getting a crash course in mobility again?"

I pulled myself to a standing position. "What do you need me to do?" I asked.

"Pull the brakes off the beds and wheel them inside the TARDIS. The first door on the left will be the infirmary." He started to do something to the doors at the far end of the room. "Hurry!"

I ignored the protests of wobbling muscles and kicked the brakes off my dad's bed. He wasn't even conscious yet as I shoved the bed towards the doors of the TARDIS. I found the infimary, which was _huge_, and left him there. I went back for my mother, and when I came back in the TARDIS, my dad's bed was neatly lined up against the wall.

I glanced suspiciously up at the ceiling. "What's going on?" I asked.

A low hum came from the ship, a reassuring sort of noise. Good enough for me.

The Doctor finished locking the doors and started to help with the beds. We got everyone in the TARDIS and were just closing down the virtual reality system when the doors to the holding room burst open and a horde of aliens came charging in. We shared a glance and the Doctor grabbed my hand. "Run!"

We ran for it, but my legs suddenly decided to give out on my and I stumbled. Sheer adrenaline kept me going for the last few steps into the TARDIS and I collapsed on the chair as the Doctor slammed the doors shut behind us and ran to the console. I sat there, watching him, and when we were safely under way he turned to me.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

I nodded, gasping for breath. "Yep. Just realized, I have, lungs, again."

He smiled. "You were brilliant," he said. "Shall we go check on your mum and dad?"

"Oh!" I gasped. In the excitement, I'd nearly forgotten about the 23 people in the infirmary. "Um," I said, "I'm gonna need a little help getting there. My legs are gone."

The Doctor picked me up as if I was light as a feather, which I probably was, and swiftly carried me to the infirmary. He set me down on an empty bed - when had that appeared? - and ran a couple of scans. "You're okay," he said. "Just a little nutrient-deficient and muscle atrophy." He gave me a couple little vials of colored liquid. "Here you go. Drink those and you'll be good as new."

While I sniffed cautiously at the liquid and wondered what it tasted like, he went around scanning everyone and putting the IV form of the liquid into them. "So where are we going?" I asked, once I'd downed the medicine. It tasted like orange soda. Not bad.

"Earth, 2010," he said. "I'm taking you to UNIT headquarters in London to get you the proper paperwork and things. I dunno. A house. You'll need a house. And jobs. Have you got a job? You'll need money too, probably."

I smiled. For someone who knew _everything_, he had no idea what a normal life was like. No wonder his old self had wanted to know what a normal life was like.

"Doctor," I said slowly. "Instead of going to Earth, with everybody else, can I come with you? I don't want to be stuck there. I mean, I know it's a brave new world and all that, but, I mean, my parents'll be there, getting jobs and stuff, and it's a whole new _universe_ out there, with actual, proper aliens and I can't just stay home and get a job..." I trailed off, unsure if I was making sense. My headache was getting worse.

He started to say something, but then all of a sudden, everything went black.

When I woke up, the infirmary was dark. Only a soft glow came from the tops of the walls. The Doctor was sitting in a comfy looking chair nearby, reading a book. He noticed that I woke up and came over, smiling anxiously. "Hey."

"Hey," I said. "What happened?"

"You blacked out," he said. "Your brain is still adjusting to the real world. It's going to take a while for you to get used to it. But after you adjust, and you get all sorted out, then yes."

"Yes what?" I said blankly.

"Yes, you can come with me," the Doctor said, grinning. "I'd love for you to come." But there was still a hint of sadness in his eyes. "I don't know if I'll still be around though."

"What are you talking about?" I started, and then remembered about him dying. "Won't you just change?" I asked.

"Hopefully, yes."

"You'll be okay," I told him.

"Yep."

We were quiet for a few mnutes, thinking, and then the Doctor looked up and smiled. "We're here," he said.

I looked around. "Really?"

"Yep." He took my arm, led me to the console room, and threw open the doors. "Ta-da. Earth."

We were standing on the front step of UNIT HW, and it was a grand old place. As I stood there, , a ton of UNIT officers began pouring out of the building, followed by an officer who was clearly in command. "Doctor," she said. "Hello again."

"Helo," he said, giving her a little wave.

Then came miles of paperwork as we were registered and given fake ID's and run through tests and all kinds of things. The Doctor stayed, surprisingly. I got the impression that he never stayed around for the boring stuff, but this time, UNIT made him stay to give the whole story.

When I finally was done, and my family and I were going to be taken to an inn nearby, to wait for our plane to America, I ran over to where the Doctor was siting on a bench, outside the TARDIS. He stood up as I approached. "Teri Marshall, citizen of Earth," he said, smiling at me.

"Yep." I gave him a huge hug, which he returned. "Thank you so much, Doctor."

"You are very welcome," he said.

"So, I'll see you around?" I asked anxiously.

"I hope so," he said.

"Don't forget," I told him. "United States of America, Oregon, somewhere in the Willamette Valley."

"I won't forget," he said. He smiled brightly at me. "Have a brilliant life."

I gave him another hug and nodded. "I will." I watched him get in the TARDIS and disappear, and then made my way to the car. I was quiet the whole way to the inn, wondering if I had just said goodbye to the Doctor for the last time.

Over the course of two years, we eventually settled into life on an actual planet Earth. It was hard to get past the fact the fact that everyone had turned into versions of the Master, and Gallifrey - I recognized it from the Doctor's descriptions - nearly knocked us out of the sky, but once we were over that, life went on as normal. I thought I'd seen the Doctor, looking at me across a crowded college campus a day or so after that planet-colliding episode. He looked terribly sad, but I only saw him for a second and I didn't think it was really him.

Another year passed and I had my associate's degree in web design. Apparently living in a virtual reality for four years makes you really good at programming.

I was out for a walk one day, resting my brains and enjoying nature, when suddenly, I heard it. The TARDIS. _Finally,_ I thought, and ran towards the sound. As I stared, the TARDIS materalized before me. It was bigger, and newer looking, and different. I went over to the door. It swung open at the touch of my hand. I went inside cautiously, and my jaw nearly hit the floor in surprise as I stared at the gold and yellow and orange interior.

Finally I turned my attention to the man standing there at the console, who was grinning like an idiot. He was even younger this time, wearing a jacket with elbow patches, a red bow tie. Only the eyes were the same, maybe a little sadder, a little older. "Doctor?" I asked.

"That's me," he said, grinning even wider.

We hugged, and I said, "You look, different."

"Good or bad?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said, looking at him critically. "I like the bow tie."

His eyes lit up. "I know right? Bow ties are cool."

"So, how long has it been?" I asked.

"Three years."

"Same as me."

"Yep."

"What've you been up to?" I asked.

"Oh, you know, things."

I raised an eyebrow at him.

"Well, after I left..."

He told me his adventures and then I told him mine. His were more awesome, to say the least. "Now what?" I asked.

He twirled around the control room like a dysfunctional giraffe. "Where do you want to go?" he asked. "Anytime, anywhere, pick a spot."

I had been waiting to hear those words for seven years. I grinned. "You pick."

He stared into space for a few seconds and then threw his hands up in the air. "Got it!" He started to work the controls. "Next stop, somewhere fantastic."

_~The End~_


End file.
